entitlement, specifically mine. I was born in 1952; my mother’s father was a farmer who committed suicide. Both of my grandmothers were teachers. My father’s father, when I knew him, was retired — and used to deliver phone books (why?) — but earlier on, he owned an auto repair shop. I don’t come from ‘wealth,’ but my father — after a long and successful career in the insurance business — left me enough money to buy a house in Hamilton a few years back. So if that’s what you call aristocracy, so be it. My father’s family was admittedly, pretentious; they had a grand house in Connecticut and pretended they were rich. My father’s mother was a ‘Daughter of the American Revolution’and her photo was in LIFE magazine pinning a poppy on Truman. All this may sound pretty privileged to you. And I don’t deny it is. When I was young my parents owned a house in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, and when I was 12 my parents were divorced — and my sister and I moved with my mother to a town house in Don Mills (my mother said it was worth it to suffer plastic toilet seats if my sister and I could go to a school in an affluent suburb). Yes, I’m all that — and white, and male. But if you’re going to estimate my entitlement (I mean, let’s be ‘intersectional) I’m also effeminate, gay, and drag queen. This should necessarily be included in the calculations; but unfortunately that’s not allowed anymore. There are four categories of people whose lack of privilege is considered negligible: working class persons, trans persons, the invisibly disabled, and gays/and/or/lesbians, Some trans people are completely invisible (they have an 'inner girl' inside that only they know of) but so much fuss is made about trans people, that we really shouldn’t worry about them. However, not much is said about, let’s say, a dyslexic person. But much should be. Certainly they have been generally abandoned by the education system; a large percentage of those in jail are dyslexic. And when it comes to class, you can dress up and speak nicely and no one will know, but the effect of growing up in a family that struggled to keep bread on the table can be toxic indeed. Then there’s me. I’m a born sissy, grew up wanting to take ballet, play the piano, and write poetry. Then, alas, I fell in love with men, and became a drag queen. And now, when I tell people I’m a university professor, they say ‘Well, good for you!” It’s clear I have triumphed over my ‘disability.’ I should be proud —and I am — but the condescension still irks me. However, all this is irrelevant. ‘Entitlement’ is not so much in the eye of the beholder as in the eye of the parent. I am not one who wishes to blame my mother for everything — though I often do — especially when I'm drunk (every weekend). However she is responsible not only for my mental instability but also my ‘talent.’ I do not believe I am very talented. But my mother certainly did. You wouldn’t hear her say a word against me until I got much older, and she became an alcoholic. (Then she would come to my theatre openings and say ‘Don’t I exist? Why are they all going on about you?’) But before that, she bought a piano which we managed to wedge into our tiny flat in an old house in East York, a piano that I played until I decided I was not a composer. She encouraged me in everything — to write, to direct plays, to be flamboyant (until she realized my being flamboyant was ‘gay’) and to be stupendous — and she loved me, literally, too death. She listened, laughed at all my jokes, and convinced me I was delightful, and that I could do anything. And for awhile I certainly did. I owe this all to her, because -- superficially at least -- she herself was the very definition of entitlement. I’m not sure where she dredged up that performance — born out of wedlock, with a father who was a suicide, her ne’er to well school teacher mother having unloaded her on various relatives as a child -- including an uncle who molested her. Strikingly beautiful, she married at 17 to the slightly doltish, boringly nice, very insensitive man who was my father. She fooled waiters into thinking she was a rich woman (which she definitely was not) yet she somehow managed to scrape together enough money together through her business as a corporate 'headhunter' to live in Sutton Place (it used to be a ritzy hotel in Toronto -- now it's, sigh, a condo). She was so gorgeous people thought she was a movie star. She was rude to all the 'help' — which she generally considered to be the rest of the world, and insulted everyone who she considered beneath her, which again, was most everyone. Maybe it was case of overcompensation, I don’t know, but she lived in a fairy tale of her own devising and I was, it turns out, the only other person she also deemed so especially gifted. Nothing was good enough for me. But this entitlement has caused me much more anguish than perhaps you will imagine, as basically (have you noticed?) life is not a fairy tale, and there have been -- for me -- many rude awakenings. In 2015 I was confronted about my entitlement by Evalyn Parry the most recent artistic director of Buddies, and the woman who ‘cancelled’ me there (it’s a long story, and you’ve probably heard it, she decreed that this blog was politically incorrect and incited The Woke Mob to attack my own personal capitol building — that is myself, and my career). Evelyn herself got taken down by the same Woke Mob, but that doesn’t make my trauma any easier to endure. It all started in her office one day when she, sighingly asked me: “Why do you write so many plays, Sky?’ This habit seemed to irritate her -- I guess because I always wanted to perform them at Buddies. I told her that I loved writing, and I needed to write. Trying to help, I added “I’ve written more than 40 plays, some of them quite successful, if only now and then one of them was produced --somewhere in Canada -- I might feel less compelled to write.” She looked at me, balefully. “You are so entitled.” I was very hurt by this. But I tried to ignore it ('De Nile' is not just a river in Africa). But looking back on it now, yes I am terribly, terribly entitled. That is, if being a writer, and wanting to write, is entitled — well so be it! I once thought my urge to write was a virtue. I suppose I can blame my entitlement for the shock and horror that consumed me when I suddenly discovered that, no -- it's a sin.
